Vendee Globe - Golding comments on PRB incident

In the Vendee Globe, Mike Golding (Gamesa), who’s had a tough night with next to no sleep for 24hrs comments on the unfortunate incident on PRB:

Mike I don’t know if you know but Vincent on PRB has hit a metal buoy, first of all, How are you?

' Yes, I’m fine, we’ve actually had no communication from race direction on the incident, but my team did call me and tell me that PRB had hit a buoy, however, we haven’t been provided with a position on it as yet'.

Just to let you know he has a tear near the front of his hull, and also it seems some damage to his outrigger on the starboard side, there are very few people in this race, or very few people in the world who are more experienced than you of sailing round the world, when you are in these conditions, how easy is it to make these kind of repairs, and what do you think he will need to do?

' Well, I don’t know too much about it, obviously only what I’ve heard from the team, but, making any sort of repair on a boat out at sea particularly one that’s facing the Southern Ocean ahead, proves very difficult and it relies on you having enough kit on board to be able to do that. I understand it’s a sort of metre long tear in a high load part of the boat near the front, it’s a really tricky one, it’s going to be a dilemma for Vincent, but, if anyone in this race is capable of effecting a good repair I’d imagine it would be Vincent, you know, he’s the man'.

What’s the hardest repair you’ve had to make Mike, this is your fourth consecutive Vendee Globe, and you have certainly been through some thrills and spills, what’s the hardest thing you’ve had to do at sea, or decision you’ve had to make at sea?

' I had to completely repair one side of my standing rigging on the first Vendee of 2000, I found that the standing rigging was three quarters chaffed through, so I had to completely replace that with rope, I always use rope, that was in the Atlantic coming back up, physically it’s a pretty tough thing to do, but technically it’s not that tough. To be honest, doing a repair like PRB’s relies on having the correct equipment, you are talking about a wet lamination to repair a pre-preg construction; it’s going to be tricky'.

You are in the South Atlantic, a little to the North West, how have you gone overnight?

' It’s going OK, I think for the first time we have actually made some gains back off the leader, so that’s quite encouraging. It’s been a pretty tough time ever since we left the Doldrums we have been suffering from not being able to make the VMGs [velocity made good] to the boats south of us, unfortunately, this has been made worse by the protest. This whole part of the race is going to go down in my book as something to forget!'